Take a listen to Linda Darling-Hammond talking about improving education in the United States and comparing our education system to other nations. She discusses how our international scores have dropped...the relationship between achievement and poverty...the importance of a stable teaching force...how No Child Left Behind has actually lowered achievement in the country and increased teacher attrition and how schools in high poverty locations are not given the resources to succeed and then punished when they fail. She answers the question, "How can we improve education in the US?"
The actual presentation is about an hour long (1:12 if you listen to the intro and questions)...and well worth the time spent.
During the question and answer period she talks about the effects of Teach for America, immigration (legal and otherwise), the cost of American education, and Race to the Top.
Linda Darling-Hammond: The Flat World and Education, August 2, 2010
Linda Darling-Hammond: The Flat World and Education from Chautauqua Institution on FORA.tv
Some quotes from the presentation...
It's not that all schools are failing...we have wonderful successful schools...It's that we are neglecting this group of schools serving our neediest Americans.
We all now have to care about the education of every person's children. It's not going to be enough to say my kids got educated because for every person who is not in the labor force, not paying taxes, not contributing to our health care system, to our Social Security, the social bargain that we have as Americans cannot be maintained. All of us have a vested interest in every child being educated, and yet kids who we wouldn't spend $10,000 on to get them good teaching in Oakland, when they were second graders...to be sure they could learn to read...we're spending $50,000 on them in prison ten years later.
- Each year of additional education nets a 4% gain in long-term economic growth.
- A new high school dropout in 2010 had less than a 50% chance of getting a job.
- That job earned less than 1/2 of what the same job earned 20 years ago.
- Lack of education is ever more strongly correlated with incarceration.
- Prison costs now complete with education expenditures in many states.
A system of winners and losers is not going to be the most direct course to getting the investments that we need...In every community children grow up and they will have access to preschool education. In every community children should go to a community school where there are well-prepared, thoughtful teachers who are there for the long haul with a thoughtful curriculum. In every community those wrap-around services ought to be there. To do that...we can't do it by winners and losers. We can't do it by some people writing grants and getting two years of funding and then the funding goes away and then you've got to do something else. We've got to do it by making long term, purposeful investments...
Linda Darling-Hammond bio from Chautauqua Institution
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.
From 1994 to 2001, Darling-Hammond served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation's 10 most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. She recently served as the leader of President Barack Obama's education policy transition team.
Darling-Hammond has worked with dozens of schools and districts around the nation on studying, developing and scaling up new model schools -- as well as preparation programs for teachers and leaders -- that enable much greater success for diverse students. She has also worked with civil rights and community-based organizations to leverage changes in state and local level policies and to create practices that promote greater equity in educational opportunity and access for traditionally underserved students. For this work, she has been awarded, among others, the Charles W. Eliot Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education, the Asa G. Hilliard Award for Outstanding Achievement in Racial Justice and Education Equity, the Founder' Award from the National Commission on African American Education, the Woman of Valor Award from Educational Equity Concepts, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Having written more than 300 journal articles, Darling-Hammond is author or editor of 16 books, including The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do, co-written with John Bransford. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale University and her doctorate in urban education (with highest distinction) from Temple University.
Also check out this review of The Flat World and Education on the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education (NEIFPE) Blog.
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Stop the Testing Insanity!
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